A little bit more than patriotism. A little bit lower than jingoism. ---
Nirendra Dev

Saturday, May 21, 2016

Who’s dunn it in Sonar Bangla? Didi’s victory has a pattern of Basuism

The best part of West Bengal electoral
battle of 2016 is the wash out of the communists – a long deserving gift from the
frustrated people. The worst part is perhaps the increased strength of
mercurial Mamata Banerjee. One is saying so with utmost restraints and respect
for people’s mandate.

If people have decided to chose Mamata; none has
the 'Shamta (the power)' to deny that. But amid the big hype about Didi’s
success – that she has got people’s mandate once again – one wonders how much
difference it would make for the state in short run and the long run!

After all
– every five years Jyoti Basu also managed such immense mandate – and he got it
for three decades! He ensured decimation of Congress but in all that created a
vacuum for creation of a leader called Mamata Banerjee.

Basu hardly encouraged discipline both
among people and his cadres. His cadres were always right for him as long as
they brought electoral victory to the party. Is Mamata different?

The party work and electioneering became
round the year affair in Bengal and there was unleashing of violence of all
sorts. But the bloodshed never stained Basu's image. He remained the ultimate
Bhadralok, like the Queen of Britain, who could never go wrong.

Today, Mamata can also do no wrong!

Basu's industrialist son Chandan kept on
making news and unlike the case of Devilal-Chautala elsewhere - even that did
not touch the Marxist veteran reputation. He remained the ultimate 'Bhadrolok'. Didi too
has relatives, but she remains a hawai-chappal leader!

One
only revisits a comment from a sitting Trinamool Congress member of parliament
– “we will win, that’s our good luck. But that is also (Banglar – dur-bhagya)
bad luck of West Bengal”.

So amid the hype about Mamata Banerjee’s
return to power – we have a simple question that of course offers a complex
answer: Will Bengal change?

Can Didi change? Will syndicate raj end?

Hero worship or slavish mentality could
be the domain of Tamil Nadu politics and the prostration (साष्टांगप्रणाम) culture of AIADMK
“men in white”.

But in West Bengal, Jyoti Basu too could
do no wrong. Hence even episodes like murder of Anandamargis remained part of
political legacy.

My worst fear is this mandate has
brought Didi in that unique club. And it happens just with one win! Luck na?
For Narendra Modi – even three consecutive victories in state assembly polls
and the 2014 Lok Sabha war have not made life easier for Modi ----2002 remains
a stigma. But stigmas cannot touch few political cultures – Mamata Banerjee has
actually mastered that legacy.

She is certainly on her road to the Red
Fort in Delhi but no stigma! How? Look at the manner a clearly-pro-Christian
website glorifies Mamata’s cotton sari!

Sharada Ma is a thing of past, it looks
like!!

“On the death of Missionaries of
Charity’s Sr. Nimala Joshi Mamata spent nearly 3 hours in the funeral Eucharist
at the Mother’s House with her cotton white saree with blue boarders like other
Mother Teresa nuns in the crowd. I hear that she is keen to go to Vatican to
witness the canonization of Mother Teresa of Kolkata on September 4. Mamata is
simple, honest with frugal lifestyle. But she is the conqueror of hearts of the
million in the state,” says S J Jyothi in ‘MattersIndia’.

Where’s then the so called lawlessness
in West Bengal? What was Election Commission of India so worried about? The
winner takes it all. Is that taking on a platter is much easier if the politics
is all about possible anti-Hindu and anti-Narendra Modi?

The Congress under Sidhartha Shankar Ray
perhaps discovered the politics of violence in Bengal. Last five decades this
has been the norm.

The Communist Party of India (Marxists)
continued it with their Midas touch. And as the Didi dispensation only took it
to a new height, look around who regrets “merciless killing” – the illustrious
Sitaram Yechury!

As a Bengali by birth, one knows -
Bengalis are also born moral teachers. Remember Somnath Chatterjee, who did not
allow “state subject” Nadigram being discussed in Lok Sabha but when it came to
his time to give up Speaker’s post – hardly 6 months before Lok Sabha polls –
he turned towards Manmohan Singh and showed thumbs down to comrade Prakash
Karat! But Nandigram and Singur and the subsequent mandate of 2009 Lok Sabha
polls and 2011 historic assembly elections could not help Somnath da’s holier
than thou politics.

The fall of Marxist rule in 2011 came
in. “But the tragedy of Bengal is; all that happened in extra-ordinary
swiftness. There was no change on ground – culturally and otherwise,”says an
article in RSS-run The Organiser.

True, club-dadas simply changed colour!
While the ‘Nandigram policy’ of Buddhadev Bhattarcharya was discredited, the
blind faith of colony goondas on the age-old belief that police and political
masters have to be kept in good humour stayed on. Rest is history. People have
again decided to continue with Mamata Banerjee. For essentially a non-resident
Bengali, Jyoti Basu has been a cult figure for us in the north east during our
formative days – where Bengalis more than once have been at the receiving end.

In 1977, when Basu first walked to
Kolkata (then Calcutta’s) coveted corridors of power – the Writer’s Building –
I hardly knew anything about politics, Marxism and

governance. But Basu was an
instant hero!

--A sort of a Bengali hero in national
political scene – to be even worshiped at times in the league Subhas Chandra
Bose and Bidhan Roy.

Later period in my life – I realized the
blunder of thinking that Jyoti Basu would have been India’s best prime
minister! Mamata Banerjee is rushing in. I am happy – as a political journo –
because she will give Nitish Kumar a run for his money – with support of fodder
scam protagonist Lalu Prasad!

When ideologies and rules do not seem to
work, well my sister, now a resident of Kolkata says wryly: they are all
shackles. West Bengal remains in shackles!

(ends)

Tail piece:

The success in recent elections
especially in Assam would give BJP a renewed booster for the battle in Uttar
Pradesh and Punjab and Sarbanand Sonowal’s presence as a tribal chief minister
would also mean possible conquest of Manipur. It can be a season of lotus
blooming in early 2017. -- Election results in Assam and even in Kerala and
West Bengal for Narendra Modi are crystal clear message on how elections should
be fought. This victory signals many things, one of them is if handled well-
BJP can win back Uttar Pradesh?

About Me

Author of 'Rainbows and Misty Sky: Windows to North East India';
'HEART ALONE' (A collection of short stories), 'Modi to Moditva: An Uncensored Truth' and other books, 'Ayodhya: Battle for Peace' (2011) ‘Godhra – A Journey To Mayhem’ (2004) and ‘The Talking Guns: North East India’ (2008).